Cardfight!! Vanguard - Major Tournament Results (Jan 26-27/2019)

It's a new format!  Yes it is!  Set 4 is now out and the first weekend of results are in which means...a grain of salt will be needed as people are going to be experimenting with the new stuff.  Just like with Set 3 and all that.  However just like with Set 3's release weekend this is the pivotal moment to see how the new cards measure in the scope of a format as here when people are most willing to experiment with a new clan or a second wave of support and if that clan isn't able to succeed on some level (or yield a high number of players) then people will be discouraged from trying to make what appears to be a bad deck work and go back to what they know will win.  This is what happened to the Nubatama Clan and Oracle Think Tank's Magus/Witch support when Set 3 came out as these decks failed to break into the metagame and were abandoned pretty quickly.  Another thing to note is that this past weekend had a tournament held under the "Two Deck Format" which to make a long story short is similar to Conquest Format from Hearthstone;

-Best of 3 Format
-Both players bring two decks.  Their Main Deck and their 2nd Deck.  Must be different Clans
-The player who wins Game 1 must switch to their 2nd Deck.  The loser can switch to their 2nd Deck or stick with their main.
-The first player to win with both Clans wins the match.

That is the jist of it but there's alot of nuance to the format that makes me eager to try it as we'll see in the results.

Crystal VGCS (Standard - 24 People minimum): 

1st) Neo Nectar 

2nd) Shadow Paladin 

3rd) Gold Paladin 

4th) Angel Feather 

5th-8th) SP/GP/GN/OTT

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place

Malaysia GiFT VGCS 02 (Standard - 55 People): 

Format was "2 Deck Fight" (1st deck/2nd deck).

1st) SP/GN **

2nd) Mura (Shirayuki)/AF

3rd) NN/OTT (Magus)

Clan Distribution (1st Deck/2nd Deck):

NN - 10/2 

DP - 3/3 

GC - 1/4 

LJ - 4/3 

GN - 6/4 

Murakumo - 6/10 

AF - 4/3 

Kagero - 3/3 

Narukami - 2/2 

OTT - 6/8 

SP - 4/2 

RP- 2/3

DI - 1/2 

AqF- 1/0 

GP - 2/1 

Nubatama - 0/2 

SB - 0/1 

PM - 0/2

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place

**Fist place was Ryan Kai for those of you who are familiar with famous players.

5th Kishiwada VGCS (Standard - 34 Teams):

1st) AF/OTT/GN

2nd) SP/GN/Murakumo

3rd) NN/AF/Murakumo

4th) Not posted yet 

Clan Distribution:

Royal Paladin - 11

Shadow Paladin - 11

Gold Paladin - 3

Angel Feather - 15

Oracle Think Tank - 18

Genesis - 1

Tachikaze - 2

Murakumo - 14

Dimension Police - 2

Link Joker - 4

Dark Irregular - 3

Pale Moon - 2

Grandblue - 1

Megacolony - 1

Great Nature - 8

Neo Nectar - 6

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place

Credit to the Team Absolution Discord

Despite everyone taking a proverbial shit on Shadow Paladin's wave two support the deck is performing better than expected.  Seems to be that the deck's focus has shifted from trying to aggro the hell out of people to being slower and advantage oriented.  So basically Robbie Kohl is going to play it badly  Murakumo is also performing strongly which is to be expected however the surprise here is that the deck has dropped Mandala Lord entirely and is now focused around the Dueling Dragons and Shirayuki to create this beast of an aggro deck with ridiculous defensive options.  OTT, Angels, Great Nature and Neo Nectar are also doing well however what I've noticed that Royal Paladin and Narukami which were two of last format's top 5 decks are nowhere to be seen.  Furthermore Link Joker has completely flopped on its first weekend.  Nobody was able to top with it in Singles or Teams and in both tournaments they had low representation.  What happened!?  Is it because Standard Link Joker is based on Deletors instead of Chaos!?

Well it's a few things actually.  Link Joker's issues stem from the fact that they honestly play like a worse Kagero deck and look where they're at in the format.  Having its support split into Deletors and Not Star Vaders also hurt as both builds have a shitty first Grade 3 ride which in this format is a back breaker.  Look at all the decks that are topping and see what they have in common: all of them have Grade 3s that you don't mind riding first even if some of them have really good effects if you ride them second (Imperial).  Link Joker doesn't have that.  Link Joker has Docking Deletor, Greion.  CB2 for Delete and nothing else is awful in today's Meta and it's no surprise that a worse Kagero deck without Waterfall (the thing that keeps Kagero relevant) isn't able to compete.  It'a also lacking in draw power and sufficient resource management.  However I will say that Link Joker is very, very close to breaking in.  The Deletor deck really only needs a couple good cards and it's off to the races.  More's the pity when they'll get nothing in EB06 because of Brandt taking the focus of that set.

In regards to the 2 Deck (now referred to as "2D") event what we see here is people going about it in the way that I suspected competitive players would.  They bring their main deck which they feel the most comfortable with, then their 2nd Deck is something that would have a good matchup against what the opponent will bring in game 2.  In this case the 1st Place player mained a Force Clan and had an Accel Clan as his 2nd deck which is a fantastic choice when you know your opponent is going to be binging in a Protect Clan for Game 2.  I really like what this format can bring about as far as deck choices and how people go about their play and I hope North America adopts this eventually.  Apparently Japanese Buddyfight already competes under 2D Format for its official events so this isn't out of the realm of possibility.  I can only hope that the North American playerbase is willing to embrace this given how...pigheaded the less competitive Cardfighters around here can be.